Philip Lutgendorf
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195309225
- eISBN:
- 9780199785391
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195309225.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Hinduism
This chapter presents a representative selection of well-known tales and variants that emphasize Hanuman's heroic role both within and outside the conventional Ramayana narrative. Selections include ...
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This chapter presents a representative selection of well-known tales and variants that emphasize Hanuman's heroic role both within and outside the conventional Ramayana narrative. Selections include ancient tales adapted from the Puranas and regional Rama literature, as well as modern folktales and oral narratives. Collectively, these tales add a new installment to the Hindu mythology available in English translation.Less
This chapter presents a representative selection of well-known tales and variants that emphasize Hanuman's heroic role both within and outside the conventional Ramayana narrative. Selections include ancient tales adapted from the Puranas and regional Rama literature, as well as modern folktales and oral narratives. Collectively, these tales add a new installment to the Hindu mythology available in English translation.
Glenn Dynner
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195175226
- eISBN:
- 9780199785148
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195175226.003.0007
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
Hasidic marketing campaigns employed everything from printed sermons and tales to oral tales, songs, and dances. This chapter argues that that these methods were earmarked for specific social groups. ...
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Hasidic marketing campaigns employed everything from printed sermons and tales to oral tales, songs, and dances. This chapter argues that that these methods were earmarked for specific social groups. The importance of Hasidic printing as a vehicle for reaching the male intellectual elite has been underestimated, as demonstrated through a survey of the impressive number of printed works and an analysis of their endorsements (haskamot). Tale collections formed something of a bridge between literate, semi-literate, and illiterate populations. Oral tales were designed specifically for the latter two groups, which helps explain their propensity for fantasies about social inversion. Oral tales, in addition to songs and dances, borrowed heavily from non-Jewish culture.Less
Hasidic marketing campaigns employed everything from printed sermons and tales to oral tales, songs, and dances. This chapter argues that that these methods were earmarked for specific social groups. The importance of Hasidic printing as a vehicle for reaching the male intellectual elite has been underestimated, as demonstrated through a survey of the impressive number of printed works and an analysis of their endorsements (haskamot). Tale collections formed something of a bridge between literate, semi-literate, and illiterate populations. Oral tales were designed specifically for the latter two groups, which helps explain their propensity for fantasies about social inversion. Oral tales, in addition to songs and dances, borrowed heavily from non-Jewish culture.
Michael Suk-Young Chwe
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691162447
- eISBN:
- 9781400851331
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691162447.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
Game theory—the study of how people make choices while interacting with others—is one of the most popular technical approaches in social science today. But as this book reveals, Jane Austen explored ...
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Game theory—the study of how people make choices while interacting with others—is one of the most popular technical approaches in social science today. But as this book reveals, Jane Austen explored game theory's core ideas in her six novels roughly 200 years ago—over a century before its mathematical development during the Cold War. The book shows how this beloved writer theorized choice and preferences, prized strategic thinking, and analyzed why superiors are often strategically clueless about inferiors. Exploring a diverse range of literature and folktales, this book illustrates the wide relevance of game theory and how, fundamentally, we are all strategic thinkers.Less
Game theory—the study of how people make choices while interacting with others—is one of the most popular technical approaches in social science today. But as this book reveals, Jane Austen explored game theory's core ideas in her six novels roughly 200 years ago—over a century before its mathematical development during the Cold War. The book shows how this beloved writer theorized choice and preferences, prized strategic thinking, and analyzed why superiors are often strategically clueless about inferiors. Exploring a diverse range of literature and folktales, this book illustrates the wide relevance of game theory and how, fundamentally, we are all strategic thinkers.
Lowell Edmunds
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691165127
- eISBN:
- 9781400874224
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691165127.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
This chapter discusses the folktales that attest the recurring story-pattern contained in the Helen myth. The comparison between the texts under discussion and the ancient Greek myth of Helen ...
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This chapter discusses the folktales that attest the recurring story-pattern contained in the Helen myth. The comparison between the texts under discussion and the ancient Greek myth of Helen requires that they be described typologically. Hence the chapter first provides an overview of typology in folklore studies and the various concepts and approaches to be taken with the Abduction story. It then embarks on a more detailed analysis of “The Abduction of the Beautiful Wife,” breaking it down piece by piece and discussing recurring motifs, typologies, characters, variations across similar stories or stories which fall under the same type as the Abduction, and other such elements that repeat or break from the pattern.Less
This chapter discusses the folktales that attest the recurring story-pattern contained in the Helen myth. The comparison between the texts under discussion and the ancient Greek myth of Helen requires that they be described typologically. Hence the chapter first provides an overview of typology in folklore studies and the various concepts and approaches to be taken with the Abduction story. It then embarks on a more detailed analysis of “The Abduction of the Beautiful Wife,” breaking it down piece by piece and discussing recurring motifs, typologies, characters, variations across similar stories or stories which fall under the same type as the Abduction, and other such elements that repeat or break from the pattern.
Ibrahim Muhawi and Sharif Kanaana
- Published in print:
- 1989
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520062924
- eISBN:
- 9780520908734
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520062924.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This book is more than a collection of previously unpublished folktales. By combining expertise in English literature and anthropology, it brings to these tales an integral method of study that ...
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This book is more than a collection of previously unpublished folktales. By combining expertise in English literature and anthropology, it brings to these tales an integral method of study that unites a sensitivity to language with a deep appreciation for culture. Over the course of several years, the authors have collected tales in the regions of the Galilee, Gaza, and the West Bank, determining which were the most widely known and appreciated, and selecting the ones that best represented the Palestinian Arab folk narrative tradition. Great care has been taken with the translations to maintain the original flavor, humor, and cultural nuances of tales that are at once earthy and whimsical. The book acts as a guide to Palestinian culture.Less
This book is more than a collection of previously unpublished folktales. By combining expertise in English literature and anthropology, it brings to these tales an integral method of study that unites a sensitivity to language with a deep appreciation for culture. Over the course of several years, the authors have collected tales in the regions of the Galilee, Gaza, and the West Bank, determining which were the most widely known and appreciated, and selecting the ones that best represented the Palestinian Arab folk narrative tradition. Great care has been taken with the translations to maintain the original flavor, humor, and cultural nuances of tales that are at once earthy and whimsical. The book acts as a guide to Palestinian culture.
Lowell Edmunds
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691165127
- eISBN:
- 9781400874224
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691165127.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
This introductory chapter undertakes a comparison between a folktale and a Greek myth. It attempts to define the folktale through two avenues concerning genre and terminology as well as mode of ...
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This introductory chapter undertakes a comparison between a folktale and a Greek myth. It attempts to define the folktale through two avenues concerning genre and terminology as well as mode of communication. Here, the chapter relates the folktale of “The Abduction of the Beautiful Wife” to the Greek epics such as the Iliad, eventually focusing the discussion on the story of Helen of Troy. To aid in the discussion, the chapter introduces the comparative circle, which begins from the perception of a similarity between the target text and some other text, and proceeds from this second text to a third and so forth, until the scholar constructing the circle decides to return to the explicandum.Less
This introductory chapter undertakes a comparison between a folktale and a Greek myth. It attempts to define the folktale through two avenues concerning genre and terminology as well as mode of communication. Here, the chapter relates the folktale of “The Abduction of the Beautiful Wife” to the Greek epics such as the Iliad, eventually focusing the discussion on the story of Helen of Troy. To aid in the discussion, the chapter introduces the comparative circle, which begins from the perception of a similarity between the target text and some other text, and proceeds from this second text to a third and so forth, until the scholar constructing the circle decides to return to the explicandum.
Ibrahim Muhawi
- Published in print:
- 1989
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520062924
- eISBN:
- 9780520908734
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520062924.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter presents a Palestinian folktale that focuses on the relationship between mother and daughter. The opening episode demonstrates the importance of having children (a major theme in the ...
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This chapter presents a Palestinian folktale that focuses on the relationship between mother and daughter. The opening episode demonstrates the importance of having children (a major theme in the culture), and subsequent events in the tale demonstrate the economic value children have for the family. It is significant that the woman in the story should ask for a daughter rather than a son, but, in addition to the emotional bonds which hold mother and daughter together, an economic motive is operating in the tale as well. The mother's initial wish is not only for a daughter, but also for a source of income, and her willingness to let her daughter out of the house is conditioned by her poverty. The daughter, for her part, does not want to remain “on the shelf,” which is considered the proper place for a woman—well scrubbed and beautiful, but out of sight. She wants to go out and see the world.Less
This chapter presents a Palestinian folktale that focuses on the relationship between mother and daughter. The opening episode demonstrates the importance of having children (a major theme in the culture), and subsequent events in the tale demonstrate the economic value children have for the family. It is significant that the woman in the story should ask for a daughter rather than a son, but, in addition to the emotional bonds which hold mother and daughter together, an economic motive is operating in the tale as well. The mother's initial wish is not only for a daughter, but also for a source of income, and her willingness to let her daughter out of the house is conditioned by her poverty. The daughter, for her part, does not want to remain “on the shelf,” which is considered the proper place for a woman—well scrubbed and beautiful, but out of sight. She wants to go out and see the world.
Eli Yassif
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199206575
- eISBN:
- 9780191709678
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199206575.003.00015
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies, Judaism
This chapter emphasizes the continuity of central ideas over many centuries. Despite tremendous innovation and change within the literature, it persuasively connects folkloric motifs from a medieval ...
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This chapter emphasizes the continuity of central ideas over many centuries. Despite tremendous innovation and change within the literature, it persuasively connects folkloric motifs from a medieval Hebrew folktale with classical images from Jewish tradition. It addresses the question of the authority of narrative texts as historical documents as well as the question of narrative hermeneutics — in all its force and seriousness.Less
This chapter emphasizes the continuity of central ideas over many centuries. Despite tremendous innovation and change within the literature, it persuasively connects folkloric motifs from a medieval Hebrew folktale with classical images from Jewish tradition. It addresses the question of the authority of narrative texts as historical documents as well as the question of narrative hermeneutics — in all its force and seriousness.
Michael Suk-Young Chwe
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691162447
- eISBN:
- 9781400851331
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691162447.003.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This book examines the connection between Jane Austen's fiction and game theory. It argues that Austen systematically explored the core ideas of game theory in her six novels some two centuries ago. ...
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This book examines the connection between Jane Austen's fiction and game theory. It argues that Austen systematically explored the core ideas of game theory in her six novels some two centuries ago. It investigates Austen's basic concepts of choice and preferences as well as her views on strategic thinking. Given the breadth and ambition of her discussion, the book asserts that Austen's explicit intention is to explore strategic thinking, theoretically and not just for practical advantage. It also considers how the strategic legacy of African American folktales influenced the tactics of the U.S. civil rights movement and the ways that “folk game theory” expertly analyzed strategic situations long before game theory became an academic specialty. Finally, it looks at Austen's particular advances in a topic not yet taken up by modern game theory: the conspicuous absence of strategic thinking, or “cluelessness.”Less
This book examines the connection between Jane Austen's fiction and game theory. It argues that Austen systematically explored the core ideas of game theory in her six novels some two centuries ago. It investigates Austen's basic concepts of choice and preferences as well as her views on strategic thinking. Given the breadth and ambition of her discussion, the book asserts that Austen's explicit intention is to explore strategic thinking, theoretically and not just for practical advantage. It also considers how the strategic legacy of African American folktales influenced the tactics of the U.S. civil rights movement and the ways that “folk game theory” expertly analyzed strategic situations long before game theory became an academic specialty. Finally, it looks at Austen's particular advances in a topic not yet taken up by modern game theory: the conspicuous absence of strategic thinking, or “cluelessness.”
Michael Suk-Young Chwe
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691162447
- eISBN:
- 9781400851331
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691162447.003.0003
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter examines African American folktales that teach the importance of strategic thinking and argues that they informed the tactics of the 1960s civil rights movement. It analyzes a number of ...
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This chapter examines African American folktales that teach the importance of strategic thinking and argues that they informed the tactics of the 1960s civil rights movement. It analyzes a number of stories where characters who do not think strategically are mocked and punished by events while revered figures skillfully anticipate others' future actions. It starts with the tale of a new slave who asks his master why he does nothing while the slave has to work all the time, even as he demonstrates his own strategic understanding. It then considers the tale of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, along with “Malitis,” which tackles the problem of how the slaves could keep the meat and eat it openly. These and other folktales teach how inferiors can exploit the cluelessness of status-obsessed superiors, a strategy that can come in handy. The chapter also discusses the real-world applications of these folktales' insights.Less
This chapter examines African American folktales that teach the importance of strategic thinking and argues that they informed the tactics of the 1960s civil rights movement. It analyzes a number of stories where characters who do not think strategically are mocked and punished by events while revered figures skillfully anticipate others' future actions. It starts with the tale of a new slave who asks his master why he does nothing while the slave has to work all the time, even as he demonstrates his own strategic understanding. It then considers the tale of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, along with “Malitis,” which tackles the problem of how the slaves could keep the meat and eat it openly. These and other folktales teach how inferiors can exploit the cluelessness of status-obsessed superiors, a strategy that can come in handy. The chapter also discusses the real-world applications of these folktales' insights.
Michael Suk-Young Chwe
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691162447
- eISBN:
- 9781400851331
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691162447.003.0014
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter shows that folk game theory can be found in many different places other than Jane Austen's novels and African American folktales. The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, for ...
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This chapter shows that folk game theory can be found in many different places other than Jane Austen's novels and African American folktales. The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, for example, demonstrates the strategic advantages of projecting naivety. Ali Hakim, like Brer Rabbit and Emma Woodhouse, illustrates the perils of overstrategicness. Will Parker, like Flossie's Fox and Sir Walter Elliot, reveals how overattention to social status and literal meaning indicates strategic imbecility. Laurey, like Fanny Price, highlights the importance of strategic thinking for a grown woman. Finally, Curly and Laurey, like Austen's couples, show how strategic partnership is a foundation for marriage. The chapter considers some other lessons that we can learn from Austen in terms of economics, the congruence of narrative and social theory, and the connection of human nature and human behavior to music and mathematics.Less
This chapter shows that folk game theory can be found in many different places other than Jane Austen's novels and African American folktales. The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!, for example, demonstrates the strategic advantages of projecting naivety. Ali Hakim, like Brer Rabbit and Emma Woodhouse, illustrates the perils of overstrategicness. Will Parker, like Flossie's Fox and Sir Walter Elliot, reveals how overattention to social status and literal meaning indicates strategic imbecility. Laurey, like Fanny Price, highlights the importance of strategic thinking for a grown woman. Finally, Curly and Laurey, like Austen's couples, show how strategic partnership is a foundation for marriage. The chapter considers some other lessons that we can learn from Austen in terms of economics, the congruence of narrative and social theory, and the connection of human nature and human behavior to music and mathematics.
Brian Murdoch
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199596409
- eISBN:
- 9780191745737
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199596409.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Church History, Religion and Literature
The story of the apocryphal pope and saint Gregorius was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages and later in Europe and beyond. In a memorable narrative Gregorius is born from an incestuous ...
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The story of the apocryphal pope and saint Gregorius was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages and later in Europe and beyond. In a memorable narrative Gregorius is born from an incestuous relationship between a noble brother and sister, and is set out to sea with (unspecific) details of his origin. He is found and brought up by an abbot, but when revealed as a foundling, leaves as a knight to seek his origins; he rescues his mother’s land from attack, and marries her. On discovering his sin he undertakes years of penance on a rocky islet, which he survives miraculously. An angel sends emissaries from Rome to find him after the death of the pope, the key to his shackles is equally miraculously discovered, and he becomes pope. This hagiographical romance is not a variation upon Oedipus; it uses the invisible sin of incest as a parallel both for original sin (the sin of Adam and Eve) and for actual sin. It combines the universal theme of the quest for identity with the problem not of guilt as such, which is inevitable, but of how sinful humanity can cope if it avoids despair. The story probably originated in medieval England or France, but is found in versions from Iceland and Ireland to Iraq and Egypt, in verse and prose, in full-scale literary forms or in much-reduced folktales, in theological as well as secular contexts, and more or less continuously down to and even beyond. It is a truly European theme.Less
The story of the apocryphal pope and saint Gregorius was extremely popular throughout the Middle Ages and later in Europe and beyond. In a memorable narrative Gregorius is born from an incestuous relationship between a noble brother and sister, and is set out to sea with (unspecific) details of his origin. He is found and brought up by an abbot, but when revealed as a foundling, leaves as a knight to seek his origins; he rescues his mother’s land from attack, and marries her. On discovering his sin he undertakes years of penance on a rocky islet, which he survives miraculously. An angel sends emissaries from Rome to find him after the death of the pope, the key to his shackles is equally miraculously discovered, and he becomes pope. This hagiographical romance is not a variation upon Oedipus; it uses the invisible sin of incest as a parallel both for original sin (the sin of Adam and Eve) and for actual sin. It combines the universal theme of the quest for identity with the problem not of guilt as such, which is inevitable, but of how sinful humanity can cope if it avoids despair. The story probably originated in medieval England or France, but is found in versions from Iceland and Ireland to Iraq and Egypt, in verse and prose, in full-scale literary forms or in much-reduced folktales, in theological as well as secular contexts, and more or less continuously down to and even beyond. It is a truly European theme.
Corinne G. Dempsey
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195130287
- eISBN:
- 9780199834136
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195130286.003.0003
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Argues how the metaphor of siblings used to associate village church patron saints and temple deities reflects ambivalent yet ultimately peaceful human relations between Hindus and Christians in ...
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Argues how the metaphor of siblings used to associate village church patron saints and temple deities reflects ambivalent yet ultimately peaceful human relations between Hindus and Christians in present‐day Kerala. This chapter contrasts folktales of sacred sibling rivalries and resolutions as well as local church origin stories depicting communal tensions and interdependence with rhetoric emerging from official modes of religious and political expression. Official discourses, commonly promoting unambiguous ideologies of religious exclusivism or the complete negation of religious boundaries, challenge the more realistic portrayals of interreligious relations proposed by local traditions. Another layer of ambiguity woven into this chapter emerges through the performance of sacred sibling tales in which the Keralite storytellers commonly insist that the stories are “silly” or “untrue” in response to the author's eagerness to hear them.Less
Argues how the metaphor of siblings used to associate village church patron saints and temple deities reflects ambivalent yet ultimately peaceful human relations between Hindus and Christians in present‐day Kerala. This chapter contrasts folktales of sacred sibling rivalries and resolutions as well as local church origin stories depicting communal tensions and interdependence with rhetoric emerging from official modes of religious and political expression. Official discourses, commonly promoting unambiguous ideologies of religious exclusivism or the complete negation of religious boundaries, challenge the more realistic portrayals of interreligious relations proposed by local traditions. Another layer of ambiguity woven into this chapter emerges through the performance of sacred sibling tales in which the Keralite storytellers commonly insist that the stories are “silly” or “untrue” in response to the author's eagerness to hear them.
Bryan Wagner
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780691172637
- eISBN:
- 9781400885619
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691172637.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
Perhaps the best-known version of the tar baby story was published in 1880 by Joel Chandler Harris in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, and popularized in Song of the South, the 1946 Disney ...
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Perhaps the best-known version of the tar baby story was published in 1880 by Joel Chandler Harris in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, and popularized in Song of the South, the 1946 Disney movie. Other versions of the story, however, have surfaced in many other places throughout the world, including Nigeria, Brazil, Corsica, Jamaica, India, and the Philippines. This book offers a fresh analysis of this deceptively simple story about a fox, a rabbit, and a doll made of tar and turpentine, tracing its history and its connections to slavery, colonialism, and global trade. The book explores how the tar baby story, thought to have originated in Africa, came to exist in hundreds of forms on five continents. Examining its variation, reception, and dispersal over time, the book argues that the story is best understood not merely as a folktale but as a collective work in political philosophy. Circulating at the same time and in the same places as new ideas about property and politics developed in colonial law and political economy, the tar baby comes to embody an understanding of the interlocking processes by which custom was criminalized, slaves were captured, and labor was bought and sold. The book concludes with twelve versions of the story transcribed from various cultures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Less
Perhaps the best-known version of the tar baby story was published in 1880 by Joel Chandler Harris in Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings, and popularized in Song of the South, the 1946 Disney movie. Other versions of the story, however, have surfaced in many other places throughout the world, including Nigeria, Brazil, Corsica, Jamaica, India, and the Philippines. This book offers a fresh analysis of this deceptively simple story about a fox, a rabbit, and a doll made of tar and turpentine, tracing its history and its connections to slavery, colonialism, and global trade. The book explores how the tar baby story, thought to have originated in Africa, came to exist in hundreds of forms on five continents. Examining its variation, reception, and dispersal over time, the book argues that the story is best understood not merely as a folktale but as a collective work in political philosophy. Circulating at the same time and in the same places as new ideas about property and politics developed in colonial law and political economy, the tar baby comes to embody an understanding of the interlocking processes by which custom was criminalized, slaves were captured, and labor was bought and sold. The book concludes with twelve versions of the story transcribed from various cultures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
SCOTT ATRAN
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195178036
- eISBN:
- 9780199850112
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178036.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion
This chapter discusses the relationship between religious rituals and revelation. Religious rituals tend to be rigidly formulaic, sequentially typed public performances that conceptually forge ...
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This chapter discusses the relationship between religious rituals and revelation. Religious rituals tend to be rigidly formulaic, sequentially typed public performances that conceptually forge personal identity and memory according to cultural parameters. These publically held parameters are set by signs and displays that somewhat arbitrarily exploit and exaggerate elements of surrounding natural environment. Like oral tribal myths and enduring folktales, religious doctrine and liturgy lack any thoroughgoing logical or empirical constancy. Nevertheless, their quasi-propositional elements are well-tuned for human memory. Myths optimize storage and the retrieval of information that is culturally general and personally idiosyncratic. The myth-teller adapts a theme inherited from his or her audience in such a way that the specific time and space of the telling and participation become instantiations of universal themes.Less
This chapter discusses the relationship between religious rituals and revelation. Religious rituals tend to be rigidly formulaic, sequentially typed public performances that conceptually forge personal identity and memory according to cultural parameters. These publically held parameters are set by signs and displays that somewhat arbitrarily exploit and exaggerate elements of surrounding natural environment. Like oral tribal myths and enduring folktales, religious doctrine and liturgy lack any thoroughgoing logical or empirical constancy. Nevertheless, their quasi-propositional elements are well-tuned for human memory. Myths optimize storage and the retrieval of information that is culturally general and personally idiosyncratic. The myth-teller adapts a theme inherited from his or her audience in such a way that the specific time and space of the telling and participation become instantiations of universal themes.
Nicolás Guillén and Lydia Cabrera
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780813037479
- eISBN:
- 9780813042329
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813037479.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
This chapter examines how race is explored rhetorically and structurally in the short stories of Lydia Cabrera and the Afro-Antillean poems of Nicolás Guillén. Building on Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s ...
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This chapter examines how race is explored rhetorically and structurally in the short stories of Lydia Cabrera and the Afro-Antillean poems of Nicolás Guillén. Building on Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s concept of Signifyin(g), it shows how Cabrera and Guillén improvise on Afro-Cuban culture at a structural level, playing with genres such as the son and the folktale, to make Signifyin(g) function as both a racial and a national strategy. Guillén's Motivos de son, Sóngoro cosongo, and West Indies, Ltd., and Cabrera's Cuentos negros de Cuba combine high-culture literary style with popular linguistic styles to augment elements of word-play, improvisation, and humor already available in language production in the Caribbean. While Guillén's poetry uses Signifyin(g) to critique racist stereotypes and postcolonial structures of domination, Cabrera's stories contest and play with contemporary assumptions of literary and cultural authority.Less
This chapter examines how race is explored rhetorically and structurally in the short stories of Lydia Cabrera and the Afro-Antillean poems of Nicolás Guillén. Building on Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s concept of Signifyin(g), it shows how Cabrera and Guillén improvise on Afro-Cuban culture at a structural level, playing with genres such as the son and the folktale, to make Signifyin(g) function as both a racial and a national strategy. Guillén's Motivos de son, Sóngoro cosongo, and West Indies, Ltd., and Cabrera's Cuentos negros de Cuba combine high-culture literary style with popular linguistic styles to augment elements of word-play, improvisation, and humor already available in language production in the Caribbean. While Guillén's poetry uses Signifyin(g) to critique racist stereotypes and postcolonial structures of domination, Cabrera's stories contest and play with contemporary assumptions of literary and cultural authority.
Sadhana Naithani
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617039935
- eISBN:
- 9781626740266
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617039935.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
This introductory chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to examine the transformation in how folklore was understood, analyzed, and interpreted in postwar Germany as expressed in the works of ...
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This introductory chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to examine the transformation in how folklore was understood, analyzed, and interpreted in postwar Germany as expressed in the works of Lutz Röhrich (1922–2006). It is based on an analytical reading of Röhrich’s first and seminal work, Märchen und Wirklichkeit (1956), and his writings on folksongs collected in the volume Gesammelte Schriften zur Volkslied- und Volksballaenforschung (2002). The chapter also considers how far Röhrich’s perspective remains relevant to the present times.Less
This introductory chapter sets out the book’s purpose, which is to examine the transformation in how folklore was understood, analyzed, and interpreted in postwar Germany as expressed in the works of Lutz Röhrich (1922–2006). It is based on an analytical reading of Röhrich’s first and seminal work, Märchen und Wirklichkeit (1956), and his writings on folksongs collected in the volume Gesammelte Schriften zur Volkslied- und Volksballaenforschung (2002). The chapter also considers how far Röhrich’s perspective remains relevant to the present times.
Stuart Clark
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198208082
- eISBN:
- 9780191677915
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198208082.003.0042
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Social History
A kind of chivalry of the supernatural demands that a sacred ruler should be proven in combat with a worthy assailant armed with comparable weapons; here, too, miracle and magic enjoy a kind of ...
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A kind of chivalry of the supernatural demands that a sacred ruler should be proven in combat with a worthy assailant armed with comparable weapons; here, too, miracle and magic enjoy a kind of symmetry in opposition. Victory is, in principle, assured to all recipients of sacred power and the actual success of any individual is ipso facto a legitimation of his authority. For all its extravagant detail and complex effects, the entertainment is a simple narrative device to ensure that this happens. In LʼAventure du Château Ténébreux it occurs at the moment when the magical phial is shattered. Here, another familiar motif from the literature of folktale and romance — the instantaneous efficacy of marvellous action — highlights the properties of political miracles and those divine and absolute rulers who perform them.Less
A kind of chivalry of the supernatural demands that a sacred ruler should be proven in combat with a worthy assailant armed with comparable weapons; here, too, miracle and magic enjoy a kind of symmetry in opposition. Victory is, in principle, assured to all recipients of sacred power and the actual success of any individual is ipso facto a legitimation of his authority. For all its extravagant detail and complex effects, the entertainment is a simple narrative device to ensure that this happens. In LʼAventure du Château Ténébreux it occurs at the moment when the magical phial is shattered. Here, another familiar motif from the literature of folktale and romance — the instantaneous efficacy of marvellous action — highlights the properties of political miracles and those divine and absolute rulers who perform them.
Jack V. Haney (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617037306
- eISBN:
- 9781621039235
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617037306.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Folk Literature
This book of folktales from the Far North of European Russia features seventeen works by five narrators of the Russian tale, all recorded in the twentieth century. The tales, distinguished by their ...
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This book of folktales from the Far North of European Russia features seventeen works by five narrators of the Russian tale, all recorded in the twentieth century. The tales, distinguished by their extraordinary length and by the manner in which they were commonly told, appear to have flourished only in the twentieth century and only in Russian Karelia. Although they are easily recognized as wondertales, or fairy tales, their treatment of the traditional matter is anything but usual. In these tales, one encounters such topics as regicide, matricide, patricide, fratricide, premarital relations between the sexes and more, all related in the typical manner of the Russian folktale. The narrators were not educated beyond a rudimentary level. All were middle-aged or older, and all were men. Crew members of a fishing or hunting vessel plying the White Sea or lumberjacks or trappers in the vast northern forests, they frequently began the narration of a tale in an evening, then broke off at an appropriate moment and continued at a subsequent gathering. Such tales were thus told serially. Given their length, their thematic and narrative complexity, and their stylistic proficiency, one might even refer to them as orally delivered Russian short stories or novellas.Less
This book of folktales from the Far North of European Russia features seventeen works by five narrators of the Russian tale, all recorded in the twentieth century. The tales, distinguished by their extraordinary length and by the manner in which they were commonly told, appear to have flourished only in the twentieth century and only in Russian Karelia. Although they are easily recognized as wondertales, or fairy tales, their treatment of the traditional matter is anything but usual. In these tales, one encounters such topics as regicide, matricide, patricide, fratricide, premarital relations between the sexes and more, all related in the typical manner of the Russian folktale. The narrators were not educated beyond a rudimentary level. All were middle-aged or older, and all were men. Crew members of a fishing or hunting vessel plying the White Sea or lumberjacks or trappers in the vast northern forests, they frequently began the narration of a tale in an evening, then broke off at an appropriate moment and continued at a subsequent gathering. Such tales were thus told serially. Given their length, their thematic and narrative complexity, and their stylistic proficiency, one might even refer to them as orally delivered Russian short stories or novellas.
Carol Bonomo Jennngs and Christine Palamidessi Moore
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780823231751
- eISBN:
- 9780823241286
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823231751.003.0016
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Clementina Todesco was born in 1903 in Faller, a remote Alpine village characterized by an extremely rich oral narrative tradition. Within the Fallerese way of life, the stable provided the setting ...
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Clementina Todesco was born in 1903 in Faller, a remote Alpine village characterized by an extremely rich oral narrative tradition. Within the Fallerese way of life, the stable provided the setting for many of the work and social activities of both family and community. Villagers would gather in the evenings in the stables, where men might repair tools and women could do their spinning or embroidery. While Folktales in America captures a similar talent and love of storytelling in its subject Clementina Todesco, it is a work more formally structured as a scholarly study of one teller and her tales.Less
Clementina Todesco was born in 1903 in Faller, a remote Alpine village characterized by an extremely rich oral narrative tradition. Within the Fallerese way of life, the stable provided the setting for many of the work and social activities of both family and community. Villagers would gather in the evenings in the stables, where men might repair tools and women could do their spinning or embroidery. While Folktales in America captures a similar talent and love of storytelling in its subject Clementina Todesco, it is a work more formally structured as a scholarly study of one teller and her tales.
